


Big Houses

by Carbocat



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Depression, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s02e07 Yakimono
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-21
Updated: 2017-07-21
Packaged: 2018-12-04 23:12:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11565324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbocat/pseuds/Carbocat
Summary: He found her in his kitchen and then he found one of the pens and paper littered around the place, 'you died.'She smirked, sipping from a mug of tea, “Yes, I did.”





	Big Houses

****

No one handed him the notepad anymore.

When he woke up, panicked and alone and then surrounded by nurses and doctors, and so many questions, when he felt a felt-tip pen and a notebook shoved into his hands. He scribbled out, _Frederick Chilton, hospital, 2014. I didn’t do._

When the agents came, and demanded answers, the notepad shaking in his hands and handcuffs jangling with every letter. He scribbled out, _I want a lawyer. It was Hannibal. The evidence pointed to Will Graham, too._

When the nurses that saw him as nothing more than a monster, a failed surgeon, or worse, took pity. He held the pad up so they didn’t have to come closer and he scribbled out, _I’m fine. Please, go away._

When his legal defense took his case because he’d made a career out of winning the unwinnable and didn’t care very little about his innocence. When he answered his own questions, filled in the gaps that Frederick was supposed to, when recounted tells of hard won battles for house arrest until trial and bail lowered from astronomical numbers. He scribbled out, _I didn’t kill anybody._

When his note was ignored in favor of flashy hyperboles and self-congratulations, and Frederick was supposed to be grateful about the loss of his position at the hospital in favor of not being put _in_ it. He scribbled out, _I can’t digest animal protein._

He scribbled out, _I’m innocent._

“Right.”

When he woke up from strong drugs with heavy eyes and glassy one-sided vision to Jack Crawford at the foot of his bed, when he did not admit his mistake in words but in subtext and asked if there was anything that he could get for him. He scribbled out, _My face back_.  

There is nobody to hand him the pad from where it slipped to the floor during a drug induced nap.

There is nobody there at all.

-

And then he went home.

To white walls scrubbed clean, the intoxicating smell of bleach over blood, and the FBI sitting outside of his house. He ignored the kitchen, ignored the crime scene tape ripped down and thrown to the floor after everything had been processed, and he ignored the outrage on CNN about his release from the hospital.

He doesn’t sleep anymore.

A week passed, two weeks out of the hospital, and he thought he might have lost the concept for it.

His life had been stripped down to time tables of his own design. The days became a blur until all of it was just waiting, ticking minutes of the grandfather clock, seconds passing until he cleaned the wound with disinfectant. Tick, tick, tick until he changed bandages, took his antibiotics, painkillers, drank a smooth.

It was a routine, not a life. Clean wound, antibiotics, painkillers, skip lunch, throw up antibiotic. Clean wound, change bandages, antibiotics, painkillers.

He didn’t feel human anymore, he felt more like a specimen now. Something placed between plates of glass to be preserved and observed, held together by glue and bandages, by metal where bone had given away. The thing, the object, _Frederick Chilton_ , a woeful tale bad judgement and worse friends.

It didn’t matter how he dressed it up, it didn’t _matter_ so he stopped dressing it up as something that could be compensated for. No tie clip or cane would cover the gaping hole in his face. It had the same effect as a brand, a warning sign in flashing neon lights.

-

Gideon was dead.

There was some satisfaction in that. Some relief, no matter how brief. There was not much else. Hannibal left death and destruction in his wake, left Frederick with a ruined home, ruined career, ruined body. Face.

He turned him into a prisoner in his own home. In his mind.

Hannibal had said that he’d eat his tongue and in a way, in the only way that matter, he’d done just that. His tongue was partly gone, a row of teeth along with it, just rolls of gummy pink flesh and reconstructed bone, disjointed and slurred words when he’d tried.

Standing in front of a fogged bathroom mirror, he’d tried. Just his name, something simple, “Fff’ed’ck.”

He didn’t try again.

He felt himself falling, falling into despair, into silence. Accepting the words he’d no longer say, swallowing them down bitterly. He could not speak and he had no words left to give. He had nothing.

He had Freddie.

-

He found her in his kitchen, nearly took her out at the knees with his cane. She came bearing news, the agents sitting in a car outside the door, gone. Hannibal Lecter, gone. Everybody else, hospital or worse.

He raised the eyebrow not obscured by fresh bandages and she added, “Will Graham will live, Abigail Hobbs won’t. They found her throat slit, again.”

“They’re going to send someone to take the house arrest bracelet off later,” She said. “Congratulations, Dr. Chilton. You’re a free man.”

He found a pad and paper, they were littered around the place, _you died_.

She smirked, sipping from a mug of tea, “Yes, I did.”

Frederick’s lawsuit had been settled out of court quickly after that to save face for the FBI and what was left of his. He had not gone, didn’t sit down to a single meeting, didn’t accept the calls, didn’t say a word. The notepads were left untouched and all the pens stored in their correct cups.

Freddie was the one that communicated with lawyer, the one that turned down the first offer, the one to make demands. She was the one that handled everything.

Frederick had been washing all his dishes for the second time that day when he became a millionaire.

He dropped the plate he was holding, startled by Freddie suddenly being so close, too close, and it shattered to pieces inside of the sink. And a cup shattered, he dropped it, letting gravity do its work. And then another one, and another one, and he was sweeping dishes off the counter and onto the floor

“What are you doing?” Freddie asked, eyes wide, panic set along her jaw. “Chilton? Chil – _Frederick_ , stop!”

He didn’t.

He didn’t stop until his cabinets were bare and the floor was littered with white ceramic shards of glass. He didn’t stop until he was holding the last of the plates, a small decorative plate, cradled to his chest. It had meant to be a gift for Hannibal, “Fred, don’t-“

He threw it and it split into two, it wasn’t good enough. Before he could step forward to pick up the split pieces, there was a hand against his chest, shoving him and Freddie’s face in his, “ _Stop.”_

“You’re going to get yourself cut,” She scolded, shoving him back into the kitchen mat. His heart stuttered, dropping low into his gut, and the heat of anger faded into a cold chill, all the way to his bare feet. There was a cut on her cheek, a small little silver of blood.

She wiped at it, irritated, talking but he wasn’t listening until she snapped her fingers in front of his face, “I’m fine, you didn’t hurt me.”

He pointed but she shoved his hand back to his side, “We’re even then, I got you cut up, too, didn’t I? Stop moving because I am not pulling glass from your feet.”

-

He avoided her after that.

He avoided a lot of things. Freddie, a fogless mirror, speaking. And for a while, he avoided the kitchen again.

Freddie didn’t leave – well, she did, to write because returning from the dead was a full-time thing, but she came back. She always came back and she’d sit on the couch or a chair, whichever he was not occupying and she’d talk or complain. About her assistant, about idiot trolls on the internet, the white, white walls of his house.

He packed up the notepads and notebooks and shoved them into the kitchen cabinet filled with paper plates and plastic cups. Neither of them say anything about it.

The cut on her cheek healed. It didn’t even scar.

Frederick could feel her itching to write, every time she’d reach for her laptop or her own personalized notebook with _Tattle-Crimes_ written across it in gold. She was trying to be supportive but they were both too selfish for it.

She wanted to write about him because the people wanted to know about Hannibal Lecter’s surviving victims, about the man the FBI shot. She wanted to write but he offered her nothing but broken dishes and long silence. No one wanted to read about a man that ate dinner through a straw.

No one wanted him like this. They wanted something better than him, they always did.

He smashed her camera on the same kitchen floor for no other reason than it was there and he – he became so transfixed on the thought of his ruined face being on the internet forever. He was washing orange juice from red plastic cups and then he smashed it.

He blinked.

He opened his mouth to apologize but he had no words.

Freddie salvaged the memory card with the pictures for her latest article and he bought her a new camera online, a better camera.

“You know, things are going to get better.”

He scribbled out on her notebook with _Tattle-Crimes_ in gold on the cover, _you’re not that naïve, Miss Lounds_.

She read his note back and shrugged, “You know, it’s really annoying that you write on my stuff.”

-

Frederick doesn’t allow Freddie to see the wound, not the one on his stomach and especially not the one marring his face. He doesn’t even allow her the curtesy of the scar on his wrist where the force of the bullet and the metal of the cuff had cut so deep it nicked the artery.

She hadn’t seemed too put out by it, not really, but he could see the way her eyes dimmed with disappointment every time he checked and rechecked to make sure the tape was holding up or the bandage was in the right place.

Even after she let him click through every photo on her camera’s memory card to see that he was not in any of them, he still felt paranoid about it. About what she’d say, what she’d do, where she’d put it. She never called him out on it, though he thought she sometimes wanted to.

He locked the door behind him, checked behind the shower curtain and even in the cabinet under the sink, and then he repeated it. Then he changed the bandages with shaking hands, a pounding heart, and his eyes squeezed closed. It was a practiced routine.

He still wasn’t sleeping.

He didn’t watch TV anymore either. The news was unpleasant, the dramas even more so. Sitcoms were just dismal. It felt like he was being mocked, laughed at.

 _So, no one told you life was gonna be this way_.

He had barely been on Freddie’s radar before being shot and now. Now, Freddie Lounds was putting cheese slices on saltine crackers where an FBI agent was left gutless and bloody on his kitchen counter. She smiled a patent smile, a carbon copy smile that she must have seen on the Brady Bunch once because it didn’t suit her features and was uncomfortably unnatural.

He avoided her.

His appetite vanished, he left the room. He wasn’t eating much either.

Freddie followed him into the living room, cheese and crackers and a red plastic cup in hand, and she sat down on the other side of the couch despite the note that he stuck on the fridge that said not to take food out of the kitchen. She sat the cup down in front of him, a smoothie.

It sometimes felt like she was in his head, or maybe that his thoughts were just too loud. He thought to ask if she heard the screaming, the hollow scream that started at the base of his chest and did not stop until his eyes burnt and his head her but he stopped himself before he even reached for a pen. She knew his thoughts, answered every question that went unasked, “That protein powder stuff is shit but you’re supposed to drink it three times a day.”

“No one wants to go to the hospital for malnutrition, Doc,” She said, opening the book he left on the arm of the couch before sitting it back down when it didn’t interest her. “I took care of the bills for the month.”

He took a small sip of the smoothie to please her and she returned the gesture by reading another one of his thoughts, “They say Alana Bloom will walk again, someday.”

And then she told him when the silence dredged on like it always did and the scream in his head was making his eyes hurt, “I never thought you were the Ripper.”

He took her notebook, _You want to write a book about me._

“I want to write a book,” She told him. “I am only here to help.”

_No._

“You’ll change your mind,” She sighed, picking the book back up. “I’ll be here when you do, Dr. Chilton.”

-

He slept that night, drifting off to the sound of typing on a keyboard.

Something broke, he drifted and drifted in a sea of cold snow, stained red and dirty with footprints. It was Jack with the gun, the safety clicked off. It was Hannibal with forks, it was Will, it was Gideon. They were laughing and his teeth were falling from his mouth.

He woke up screaming, the phantom heat of burning metal searing through flesh and bone, burning his face. Mouth full of blood, something broke and blood poured down his throat, choked him and passed through his lips when he sputtered and coughed.

He asked with a mouth that didn’t work, thick with paralysis and tears, inaudible and misunderstood, and so, so scared, but Freddie was there. With words and hovering hands, “You’re okay, you’re okay, it’s just me, it’s just – fuck, where is the blood coming from?”

He tore something, gnawing away stitches inside his mouth and pulling open healing flesh. His hands were still shaking, the glass of water he was holding was tinted pink.

Freddie knew a doctor, a ‘friend’ in the loosest sense of the word that owed her big time for reasons she didn’t elaborate on. He’d refused to go to the hospital, refused the local anesthetic that he was offered, and felt ever pull and stitch of well-practiced hands.

He said nothing when the doctor was seen to the door, nothing when the glass was removed from his hand, replaced with something warm, small and pale. Freddie intertwined their fingers, she said nothing at all.

-

“I think that one is closest,” She said over his shoulder. The gingery smell of out of season shower gel and a linger of coffee in the air assaulted his senses but he felt a kind of comfort in it. “Your eyes are green, right?”

He scribbled out on the Tattle-Crime notebook, capital letters and underlined twice times so his bitterness was not mistake for a joke, _“EYE.”_

He picked a different one, a shade of green that turned out to be more blue than his color. He’d been so damn sure and he’d been wrong. Freddie said nothing when he ordered the shade that she suggested.

-

“You’re letting him win, you know,” She said, sitting on the back of the couch because she knew he hated when she did that. He slotted a book on manic depression between a hardback on abnormal psychology and another on criminal behavior. “This – this pathetic little pity party that you’re throwing for yourself? It’s what Hannibal wants.”

He ignored her.

“You’re just proving everything Hannibal said about you was right,” She states, voice cold and hard. She wanted it to hurt and it did.

He doesn’t kick her out, he would never do so and they both know it but he leaves half his bookshelf on the floor and left the room. Disappearing into the bathroom, turning the music up so loud that he couldn’t hear her voice on the other side of the door. He paced the small room, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. He removed the bandages and he stared.

When he came out, Freddie was carving an apple with all the grace of somebody who owned an apple corer their entire life. He slid a paper across the counter, two words, _FUCK YOU._

She smirked, “Less of an impact when it’s just written down.”

Freddie left at eight in the morning for work every day, even Sundays. A journalist’s work is never done, as she would say, and every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Frederick left the house at nine. He didn’t mention speech therapy but he figured Freddie knew.

He bought a new suit the day he could say his name without a slur or a lisp. He bought lunch, Freddie asked him what was up with his good mood but he only shrugged.

-

“I can help.” Freddie rolled her eyes when an annoyed glare was sent her way but otherwise was not deterred. “I have been wearing makeup since I was twelve, I know how.”

Frederick reached for the notebook but she snatched it before he got it, “Use your words.”

“Bitch.”

“Yep, always am. Let me help you.”

“No.” Frederick’s responses were typically only a word or two long and though Freddie suspected that he could do much better that that but she didn’t push it. At least, he was responding. “I can.”

“Can what?”

He held up the concealer and the brushes in his hands and sent her a glare that simply said that he knew what she was trying to do. Oh well, she tried.

-

“I’m impressed.”

Freddie offered him nothing else but that and he didn’t need anything because – because the mirror was not fogged and his refection staring back had a whole face. He smiled at the refection, it smiled back.

“Actually, how are you better looking now than you were before?” She asked, narrowing her eyes at him. His grin got bigger, a full mouth of teeth. You couldn’t even tell which ones weren’t real. “You look good, Doc.”

“Thanks.”

-

Frederick signed a contract for a book deal the same day that Freddie’s things disappeared from his guest bedroom, her hairbrush disappeared from the dresser in his room, and the gingery smell that followed her was stale in the air.

There was note sitting on top of the notebook with Tattle-Crime written across it in gold, _when you need a ghostwriter, Doc._ And an address written below it.

-

He resisted the urge to touch his cheek so instead he let his tongue run over the false teeth in his mouth before knocking again. And then once more after that.

“Asshole, I clearly – Doc?” Freddie seemed surprise, a look he would never have thought would grace her face. She leaned against the doorframe, “Going to take me up on that offer then?”

“Yes,” He answered and then bowed his head, feeling slightly stupid. “Freddie, would you like to get coffee with me.”

“To, uh, dis- discuss the book,” He added after a pause. “I have a title.”

Her lip turned up slightly and she grabbed her jacket off the coatrack, “To discuss the book, yeah?”

“Yeah, something like that.”


End file.
